If you have an idea for an article for Computers in Libraries
magazine, please let us know!

To learn more about CIL magazine
and the types of articles we want, read the FAQ.

If you have an idea for an article that would fit our needs and style, take a look at our themes for the 2018 issues and try to match your article idea to one of the issues. Every feature article does not have to fit a theme, but we use theme-related articles first and then accept general articles when space allows.

We are looking for interesting
articles, written as case studies or how-we-did-it pieces. We do not
publish academic research papers or vendor-written articles, and
CIL is not a peer-reviewed journal.

When writing queries, please
remember this:

CIL’s
mission is to provide librarians and other information professionals
with useful and insightful information about all computer-related
subjects that affect their jobs. CIL does this
through articles that are written by library professionals for library
professionals, with a friendly, personal voice. These general technical
articles should be practical and helpful for the average librarian in
any sort of environment—academic, public, special, K–12, or corporate
libraries. CIL aims to publish articles that are
interesting to read and appealing to people in many aspects of the
field.

Allow up to a month after
the query deadline for a response.

You may submit queries using
our online form. For more
details see our FAQ!

How to use information technology in K-12 education; media and technology applications in school libraries; digital literacy instruction; teaching with technology; using technology to improve assessment; reviews of digital resources for schools, learning platforms, devices, apps, and software; issues affecting technology use in schools; surveys, case studies, and best practices for school libraries and media centers. Also. Public and School library partnerships.

Case studies on evaluating current OPAC, ILS, and library platforms; exploring open source library systems; migrating to a new platform; sharing a platform with your fellow consortium members; using a vendor’s APIs to augment or extend an existing library system; and ILS performance reviews.

Mid-December

Apr

Open Access & Digital Repositories

What’s your library doing with repositories for journal articles, preprints, gray literature, dissertations, and faculty materials, data repositories, or special collections (such as email files and electronic records)? Case studies on exposing open access (OA) articles to researchers, funding OA papers, and assessing the ROI, as well as repository standards.

Mid-January

May

Digital Asset Management

Case studies and best practices for managing print and digital collections, the library’s own digital content assets, or patrons’ digital records, as well as solutions for improving the user experience in discovering and retrieving digital objects. What are the trade-offs you’ve made between print and digital? Also, reviews of digital asset management (DAM) systems.

Mid-February

Jun

Library Cybersecurity & Digital Disaster Planning

What technological safeguards have you employed to keep the library’s digital infrastructure and patrons safe from cyber criminals, DoS (denial of service) attacks, IoT (Internet of Things) attacks, ransomware, phishing, and viruses? How does your disaster plan address long-lasting power outages, failed servers, or hacker attacks that might involve patron records or the destruction of digital archives? Examples of attacks that you have thwarted.

Case studies about digitizing special collections and making them accessible to the public, developing user interfaces for digital collections, migrating older digital collections to new platforms, and planning for future maintenance of digital collections (including computer software and hardware infrastructures).

Mid-June

Oct

Discovery, Navigation, & the User Experience

What’s your experience with discovery services? How did you evaluate and choose a vendor solution? How did you develop your own? Reports on web design tests and user experience (UX) experiments, responsive design techniques, open source solutions, and using APIs to improve services to patrons. Also, search.

Mid-July

Nov

Library & Publisher

How does your library use technology to support scholarly publishing, research data archiving, patrons’ self-publishing projects, your university press, or your own ebook publishing initiatives? How do you use content to market your library? Surely you publish reports about your library—care to share one?

Mid-August

Dec

Cloud Computing

Share your experience with remote hosted library platforms, cloud computing, web-hosted services, and SaaS solutions. How do they work in practice? What technical issues have you encountered and overcome? Studies that address price, performance, and ROI for moving the library’s IT infrastructure from the back office to the cloud.

Mid-September

Any Time

Any Topic

Tell us your story. We are always looking for stories on how you selected and deployed devices or systems, rolled out new tech-based solutions, and achieved desired outcomes by using a technology framework, as well as cases studies about OPACs, ILSs, and other library platforms.

Propose any topic at any time

*Send your proposal via our online query form
by
the dates noted above. After considering all ideas received, we will
notify those whose articles have been accepted.
We’ll discuss exact materials due dates when your query is accepted.